Audit Reveals Failures in SC Department of Disabilities and Special Needs
December 3, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
An audit of the South Carolina Department of Disabilities and Special Needs has reported numerous oversights including failures to follow up on up on safety violations and insufficient efforts to keep abusers off facility payrolls, yesterday’s Associated Press (via the Courier Post) reports.
The audit recommends Disabilities and Special Needs require fingerprinting and FBI national background checks for caregivers, not just a check through the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division. The agency said it would consider the feasibility of fingerprint checks.
Meanwhile, the agency isn’t doing enough to check references. It “does not have an adequate system to ensure that direct caregivers who are dismissed for consumer safety-related disciplinary infractions are not rehired elsewhere in the system,” the audit said. The agency said it would revise its reference check system to require more detailed information about applicants.
Questions were also raised about how the personal funds of individuals have been handled, and about how $10.5 million earmarked in fiscal 2007 and 2008 to expand intensive therapy for children with autism has been used. The audit found that only $671,917 had been spent.
And one suspects that such abuses may be not uncommon in other states?
